Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) lashed out at Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) after the extremist congresswoman said she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.”
In a speech Sunday at a Christian center in Basalt, Colorado, Boebert said she was “tired of this separation of church and state junk.”
“The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it,” she argued.
The First Amendment, from 1791, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
This is widely held to mean that church and state should be separate. Amid a spate of recent Supreme Court rulings, though, critics charge that the conservative-dominated court is dismantling that separation and eroding laws intended to prevent the government from pushing any particular faith.
Kinzinger likened Boebert’s vision to that of the Taliban, the militant group that violently imposes an extremist interpretation of Islam on much of Afghanistan.
“There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must [oppose] the Christian Taliban,” he tweeted. “I say this as a Christian.”
Boebert’s remarks sparked widespread backlash, with many others drawing similar comparisons.
“Iranian spokesperson says what?” tweeted Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence.
Amy McGrath, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who ran to unseat Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2020, told Boebert “there are lots of countries she can go to that don’t have that pesky separation of church and state… try Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan now, Iran.”
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